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Nefarian
Nefarian, son of Deathwing, is the leader of the Black Dragonflight. In his human guise, he is known as Victor Nefarius, Lord of Blackrock. Holding the Blackrock Clan and various clans of ogres under his dominion, Nefarian rules from his lair at the top of Blackrock Spire. General Information *Level: Boss *Location: Blackwing Lair in Blackrock Mountain *Type: Dragonkin Background Nefarian is an end-game dungeon boss in World of Warcraft, located atop Blackwing Lair after Chromaggus. He has two forms: his Human form, Lord Victor Nefarius, and his dragon form, Nefarian proper. Nefarian is an extremely difficult encounter as it requires a full 40-man raid to win along with strong coordination and leadership. On average, the full encounter consists of 3 stages and takes about 20-30 minutes to finish. Up until the introduction of the 40-man Temple of Ahn'Qiraj instance in early 2006, Nefarian was considered by players to be one of the most difficult of all boss encounters. "Downing" Nefarian is still a significant achievement for guilds pursuing end-game content. The World First kill was claimed by Drama, an Alliance (US) guild originally of Shattered Hand at the time of the kill, now currently resides on Korgath. Lore thumb|Nefarian's human form, Lord Victor Nefarius The Black Dragonflight was among the greatest threats to mortal life the world has ever known, and currently resides in Blackwing Lair. Led by the fallen Aspect, Deathwing, the black dragons ravaged and subverted the kingdoms of humanity and elves for generations. Yet, during the Battle of Grim Batol (nearly fifteen years ago), Deathwing was defeated by his fellow Aspects, though he managed to escape complete destruction at their hands. Whether he was eventually captured by the other Aspects or is merely hiding in seclusion, it is clear he has no direct control over his diabolical flight. Since Deathwing's departure, his eldest children have arisen to lead their brethren and recoup their failing numbers. Deathwing's eldest son, the malicious and cunning Nefarian, has claimed the burning fortress of Blackrock Spire as his aerie. There, aided by his loyal Dragonspawn, he fights a constant battle with Ragnaros and his forces for control of the mountain, and ultimately control of the entire region. Nefarian has vowed to crush Ragnaros. To this end, he has recently begun efforts to bolster his forces, much as his father Deathwing had attempted to do in ages past. However, where Deathwing failed, it now seems the scheming Nefarian may be succeeding. Nefarian's mad bid for dominance has even attracted the ire of the Red Dragonflight, which has always been the Black Flight's greatest foe. Though Nefarian's intentions are known, the methods he is using to achieve them remain a mystery. It is believed, however that Nefarian has been experimenting with the blood of all of the various Dragon Flights to create a chromatic Dragonflight as unstoppable warriors. One of Nefarian's mightiest supporters is his younger sister, Onyxia. A clever, highly intelligent dragon, Onyxia is fond of assuming mortal guises, which she uses to secretly manipulate the affairs of mortal politics and commerce. His human form, Victor Nefarius, has struck up an alliance with Rend Blackhand, though he only uses him and his clan to further his own goals. The red dragon Vaelastrasz has sworn to hunt Nefarian until the end of his days. Strategies Phase 1 To activate the Encounter a person must walk up to Nefarian's throne and talk through what he says. Upon completion of this he says "Let the Games begin." From here, Nefarian is invulnerable, and walks amid the raid randomly shadow bolting, mind controlling people and casting fear on random targets. The room begins to flood with Drakonids at the same time. Phase 1 of the fight consists of defeating the drakonids. There are 6 types of drakonids that spawn. In every Nefarian encounter you will fight Chromatic Drakonids; the largest and toughest drakonids. Fortunately they spawn in far fewer number than the other colors. In addition to the Chromatic Drakonid, 2 other random colors of Drakonids will spawn as well. One color will spawn from the southern door, and one color will spawn from the northern door. Colors are fixed for each instance: if Nefarian is attempted multiple times before the instance resets, the same color combinations will appear. Different colors of Drakonids have different special abilities and are resistant to different schools of magic. Note that, unlike some other Blackwing Lair mobs, these Drakonids are not particularly vulnerable to any magic. Below is a list of their colors and associated abilities / resistances: * Red Drakonids - Short range cone DoT fire attack, stacks; resistant to Fire * Blue Drakonids - Attack which drains mana; resistant to Frost; slightly resistant to Arcane; Lowers attack speed * Green Drakonids - Stun, resistant to Nature * Black Drakonids - Moderately powerful direct damage fire attack; resistant to Shadow and Fire * Bronze Drakonids - Reduces Attack and Cast Speed; resistant to Arcane The Drakonids can be killed by either AoE attacks or direct damage and aside from Chromatics, they do not hit very hard and do not have a lot of health. Doorway Method Raid is split up into groups so that DPS is split up as evenly as possible. The easiest way to do this is start with a Physical assist train on one side (Hunter, Rogue, Warrior) with nuker/AOE classes (Mage, Warlock, Paladin, Shaman) on the other, with healers and tanks being split evenly. At least 2 to 3 tanks need to be designated per side to be able handle Chromatic Drakonids. Taunt moves should be enough to hold mobs, but any that leak should be the primary target, followed by a designated assist target. Ranged DPS classes (Mage, Warlock, Hunter) and healers should be positioned max range from either door so that they can switch sides quickly. Hunters can be moved between sides to tweak the DPS balance. Hard, steady DPS is crucial so if one side is waiting for spawns, people need to switch over; the non-chromatic drakonids shouldn't live past taunt duration while chromatics have significantly more health and need to be "sunder" tanked. *'ALWAYS' AOE the Red Drakonid group. (Warlocks DoT with Corruption/CoA then Shadowbolt.) *'ALWAYS' Assist-train the Blue Drakonid group. *'DPS' is preferred on Black Drakonid groups, unless you get Black/Blue. *'AOE' is preferred on Bronze Drakonid groups, unless you get Red/Bronze. *'Green Drakonid' groups are governed by the other color that appears with them. For Black combos, Warlocks should be switched off with Hunters so that they can make full use of their moves. Blue doesn't impact +hit/-resistance Mages too badly but it might help to add Hunters to assist train mobs. Red and Bronze drakonids should be handled primarily by casters and only melee with called out healers. Green drakonids are the least harmful so this side should be composed mainly of dispellers and classes that wouldn't do versus the other color. Phase 2 After killing 42 Drakonids, no more will spawn (you still have to kill all the others that are up), and Nefarian lands on the balcony in Dragon Form. This is the beginning of Phase 2 of the encounter. Before landing he will cast an AoE (ignores LoS) Shadowflame on the entire raid. This version of the spell does about 1000 shadow damage and is completely resistable. Every member of the raid must be wearing an Onyxia Scale Cloak to avoid the fatal DoT from the Shadowflame (note: frost mages can use their Ice Block ability and paladins can use their Divine Shield ability to avoid the Flame without the cloak.). By now most of the drakonids should be dead. Move your raid to this area and start DPSing him down, from here on out its simple damage dealing with a few twists. He has all the abilties of normal dragons: Conical breath attack (shadow based), cleave, and bellowing roar. He also does Veil of Shadow on the target nearest to the center of his hitbox. Nefarian casts an AOE fear roughly every 30 seconds. The ground shakes immediately before this occurs, giving the MT time to stance dance and use berserker rage. Alternatively, if facing Nef as the Alliance, have any dwarf priests cast fear ward on the MT. It's worthy to note that his fear has limited range of about 35 yards, so ranged DPS and healers can completely avoid it by proper positioning. Approximately every 25-35 seconds he will "call out" a specific class. During class-call outs, that class will have some negative effect on them. Below is a list of each class and the effect their call-out has on them: * Druids: **Quote: "Druids and your silly shapeshifting. Let's see it in action!" **Effect: Stuck in Cat Form for duration of the call. **Solution: Safest call is to stay back and wait for the debuff to wear off. Some raids may let the Druids run up and DPS, however this puts them at risk for getting feared into the Shadowflame and dying. Mages should get ready to decurse the Veil of Shadow off the MT. * Hunters: **Quote: "Hunters and your annoying pea-shooters!" **Effect: Equipped ranged weapon instantly broken. **Solution: Hunters should either manually unequip their bow, or set up a macro to instantly unequip. Be sure to bring extra ranged weapons in the event your bow/gun does break. * Mages: **Quote: "Mages too? You should be more careful when you play with magic..." **Effect: Cast Wild Polymorph on random raid members, Which has no range or Line of Sight (LoS) restrictions. **Solution: Mages can use Ice Block to remove this debuff, but priests and paladins need to be ready to Dispel Magic and Cleanse polymorphed players, especially tanks. Wild Polymorph has no range or line-of-sight limitations, so moving away from the raid or behind the nearby pillars is ineffective; mages can continue to DPS through this call. * Priests: **Quote: "Priests! If you're going to keep healing like that, we might as well make it a little more interesting!" **Effect: Direct Heals will subsequently DoT their target with Corrupted Healing (Renew and Power Word: Shield do still work normally though). The DoT is stackable and can end up doing a lot of damage if not caught quickly. **Solution: Stop use of direct healing spells for the duration. Druids and Paladins/Shamans must compensate. Three or more stacks of this debuff makes the Main Tank very difficult to heal. Priests (in Alliance raids) can stack renews the main tank and wand Nefarian for mana (with Judgement of Wisdom on Nefarian). * Paladins: **Quote: "Paladins, I've heard you have many lives. Show me." **Effect: Cast Blessing of Protection on Nefarian. **Solution: Paladins should cast Judgement of Wisdom on Nefarian, and all casters should wand back mana while he is protected. (It is advisable to cease damage during this call as the MT won't be able to gain more aggro. Healer heal, the rest can lean back and regenerate mana.) * Rogues: **Quote: "Rogues? Stop hiding and face me!" **Effect: Teleported and immobilized in place close to Nefarian. **Solution: In some cases Rogues will be rooted in a "safe" spot and MT adjustment is not required. If rogues do get rooted in the Cleave/Shadowflame area, the MT must turn Nefarian 45-90 degrees away from the raid to prevent rogue deaths. * Shamans: **Quote: "Shamans, show me what your totems can do!" **Effect: Give Nefarian buffed totems, including windfury, and fire nova. Corrupted Totems have between 200 and 2000 HP and they very quickly will become a veritable forest of totems. Concentrated firepower isn't needed to take down totems, but weaker melee hits won't destroy some totems in single hits. The totems, while problematic, sound worse than they are - the major issue (raid-wide) here will be DPS on Nefarian becoming nonexistant due to clean up efforts or losing someone extremely low on health due to getting hit by a fire nova pulse. The worst part about this call is the huge drain on shaman mana and mana regeneration. It is not a good idea to enter Phase 3 when these totems are up, as the Bone Constructs will recieve the buffs from the totems. **Solution: All single target DPS switch to the totems and bring them down as fast as possible. There's not much else to do besides weather the tax on shaman mana - if shaman are low on mana, waiting to drink a mana potion until AFTER their call is over may spare them a wasted potion and some totem spawns. Note: Pressing V on your keyboard (or whatever key you have set to enable enemy health bars on-screen) is very useful for this part. * Warriors: **Quote: "Warriors, I know you can hit harder than that! Let's see it!" **Effect: Stuck in Berserker Stance plus an additional 30% damage taken for duration of the call. **Solution: Extra heals for the MT. The MT also needs to make sure that Stance Sets is not enabled or he'll likely unequip his shield. At the end of the debuff Warriors must manually return to their desired stance. The raid should also watch its damage output, as the main tank will not be generating the extra threat ordinarily caused by defensive stance. * Warlocks: **Quote: "Warlocks, you shouldn't be playing with magic you don't understand. See what happens?" **Effect: 2 Infernals per Warlock are summoned. They will stun and do minor (physical?) damage to the warlock and those immediately surrounding them. **Solution: The infernals are immune to fire damage but are easily taken down by mage AoE. Assistance from Rogues and Warriors is also helpful. Warlocks, try to stand in an isolated area in the back of the raid for the duration of Phase 2 to avoid stunning healers when the Infernals come down. Having your mages stand near the Warlocks and setting up a frost Nova rotation helps to keep them contained. Phase 3 When his health reaches 20% he will resurrect all the Drakonids killed in Phase 1 as "Bone Constructs". They hit fairly hard but do not have a lot of health, so they are relatively easily AoE'd to death. It is advisable to move AoE groups into position where the Drakonids were originally killed prior to reaching 20% HP to ensure their swift elimination, and to avoid healers getting swarmed. It is also advisable to wait for an appropriate call, where you don't lose any healing. Since the Bone Constructs are classified as Undead they are vulnerable to Paladins' Holy Wrath, which should be used in conjunction with other AoE sources. An effective technique for Paladins is: 1.) BoP a Mage 2.) Divine Shield 3.) Holy Wrath 4.) Use Stratholme water (if you brought some along). This would be an ideal time for the non-MT Warriors to pop Shield Wall and Challenging Shout in a staggered order to ensure adds do not attack healers (assuming these abilities are not on cooldown from Phase 1). Corrupted Shaman Totems from the Shaman class call will affect the adds; it is advisable to have those totems killed before the adds spawn. Note that if your computer isn't top of the line you will have extremely low FPS when the dragonids are ressurected, so make sure you turn your graphics down and do anything else you can to increase performance before the fight. After this he continues to cast his class debuffs up till he dies. Nefarian encounter can be reattempted any number of times, however, it takes 15 minutes for him to reset after a wipe (as of patch 1.9.3). Prior to this patch, once the battle had progressed to Phase 2, and the remaining Drakonids had all been killed, the gates would never re-open. Therefore, a Soulstone or other wipe prevention must have been in place, or the battle could not be re-attempted until the instance had reset completely. Nefarian would still respawn after 15 minutes. An alternate strategy for Phase 3 is to have all the AoE move towards the Drakonids have the entire raid (with the exception of the MT) move to one spot, the Heal Aggro alone will draw the Drakonids where Mage AoE becomes much easier and much more effective. Quotes *"Let the games begin!" (Victor says this right before the encounter starts) *"Worthless (Player)! Your friends will join you soon enough!" (when Nefarian kills a player) *"Well done, my minions. The mortals' courage begins to wane! Now, let's see how they contend with the true Lord of Blackrock Spire!" (When Nefarian lands at the beginning of phase 2) *"Burn, you wretches! Burn!" (Initial Shadowflame on the entire raid) *"Impossible! Rise my minions! Serve your master once more!" (Summoning the skeleton zerg at the start of phase 3) *"This cannot be! I am the Master here! You mortals are nothing to my kind! DO YOU HEAR? NOTHING!" (His last words) Loot External Links *Nefarian Video *AmpWoW - Map Location Category:Dragons Category:Black Dragonflight Category:Bosses Category:Instance:Blackwing Lair